MicroStar International Set to Launch Solid-State Drives - SandForce.

MicroStar International, a company mostly known for its mainboards, graphics cards and notebooks, plans to enter the market of solid-state drives shortly, according to a list over at SandForce LSI web-site.

Not a lot of details are presently known about MSI's solid-state drives except of the fact that they will be powered by SandForce SF-2000-series controllers, therefore, it should be expected that the SSDs will bas based on MLC NAND flash memory produced using 19nm or 20nm-class process technologies and will be available in up to 512GB capacities. Performance of the MSI's solid-state drives should be similar to other SSDs featuring SF2000 controllers: up to 500MB/s read speed and up to 60000 input/output operations per second.

This is not the first time when MSI does not announce products that it is launching or is preparing. For example, earlier this year the company quietly started to sell Interceptor family of gaming PC cases, TechPowerUp web-site notes.

Solid-state drives are indisputably one of the fastest growing segment of the technology market thanks to their advantages and constantly lowering prices. To make them even more appealing to manufacturers, they are relatively easy to make, especially for companies, who already manufacture products based on printed-circuit boards (PCBs). In order to make an SSD, one will need to get NAND flash memory, a controller as well as to design a PCB. In case of controllers from LSI/SandForce, in many cases there is even no need to develop own firmware as controller providers supply them along with controllers.

Given relative ease of making and supporting, it is logical to expect more companies to enter the market of solid-state drives in the coming months or quarters.